Sao Tome & Principe
- Island States of Africa.

Flag description: three horizontal bands of green (top), yellow (double width), and green with two black five-pointed stars
placed side by side in the centre of the yellow band and a red isosceles
triangle based on the hoist side; uses the popular pan-African colours of Ethiopia.

Location: Western Africa, islands in the Gulf of Guinea, straddling the Equator, west of Gabon.

History: The uninhabited islands were discovered by the Portuguese in
the late 15th century. The first Portuguese settlers arrived in 1493, and
soon African slaves were imported to work on the large sugar plantations.

Sao Tome was taken over by the Portuguese crown in 1522, and Principe in
1573. The Portuguese kept Sao Tome and Principe under harsh colonial rule
even after it became an overseas territory in 1951. In 1960 the Committee
for the Liberation of Sao Tome and Principe was organized. In 1972, it
renamed itself the Movement for the Liberation of Sao Tome and Principe (MLSTP).

Following the overthrow of the Portuguese dictatorship in 1974, the new
government in Lisbon recognized the MLSTP. The islands achieved
independence on July 21, 1975.

A new constitution adopted in 1990 provided for a directly elected president
who could serve no more than two terms and would share power with a prime
minister. In 1991, Manuel Pinto da Costa, the country's first president,
retired as head of the MLSTP after his party's defeat in the nation's first
multiparty elections since independence.